


This Thing of Darkness I Acknowledge Mine

by tabaqui



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Supernatural Summergen Fic Exchange 2014
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-23
Updated: 2014-10-23
Packaged: 2018-02-22 06:09:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2497394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tabaqui/pseuds/tabaqui
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From the prompt: <i>Dean has an encounter with Death after Metatron kills him but before his eyes open, demon black.</i></p><p>For my_belle for the spn_Summergen 2014 challenge.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Thing of Darkness I Acknowledge Mine

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from [The Tempest](http://www.enotes.com/shakespeare-quotes/thing-darkness) \- Act 5, Scene 1 - William Shakespeare.
> 
> Beta'd by Darkhavens.
> 
> Now with art! Amberdreams made me some amazing art [here](https://amberdreams.livejournal.com/516113.html).

Dean couldn't feel his legs anymore; not his toes, not his knees, not the tips of his fingers. The hole in his ribcage, though…. Instead of an absence, that felt more like an anvil pressing down, crushing the breath out of him, forcing his lungs flat. He could hear a rasping, bubbling sort of sound every time he dragged air into his body, that same air escaping through the bloody hole-that-was-a-weight…. It was confusing. And it _hurt_.

He had to stop, he had to stop. He forced the words out and Sam stopped dragging him like so much spare luggage and propped him on a bench, frantic and shaking and _oh, God, Sammy, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry..._. Still at last, Dean could _feel_ it, finally. All that power – all that ugly, gore-drenched desire – sluicing out of him with the air and the blood. Freeing him.

He could feel his mouth curling, ever so slightly, into a smile, and he hoped Sam wouldn't take that the wrong way.

"I'm proud of us," he said, the rough of Sam's stubble under his palm, the heat of Sam's skin blooming and then fading. _All_ of it fading; Sam's touch and Sam's voice and Sam's face getting smaller, darker, further away.

" _Dean_!" Sam's voice was tinny – static-blurred – and then it was just…gone. All of it was gone, _snap_ like a lamp turning off.

And then it turned back on, and Dean blinked, gaze coming into focus. The room he was standing in was one he would say was straight out of 'Lifestyles of the Rich and Snooty'. Leather chairs that looked too stiff; dark wood bookshelves filled with books that looked untouched; ugly, dim paintings and weird knick-knacks crowding the surfaces of spindly little tables set out randomly, like traps, for him to barge into.

Dean looked around, bewildered. 

"So, here you are again," a voice said, dry as dust on rock – faint sibilance of lizard skin over bone. _Death_ , standing easily by a tall, thin mantle, the fire under it burning with a green-edged flame. "Why am I not surprised."

"Hey, that's just how I roll," Dean said. He looked down, and found his shirt was whole and clean. "Thought you'd be sick of me by now, send some low-level Reaper for me."

Death stared at Dean, his dark eyes glittering as if behind them was all of space and time, a vast and unfathomable abyss. "I would have sent Tessa. But you took care of _that_ , didn't you?"

"That wasn't my fault," Dean snapped, and then stopped, because it kind of had been. In a way. How was he to know that Tessa would be so damn desperate? If she'd just listened, and waited….

"I'm Death, Dean, not a celestial handy man. _You_ broke heaven."

" _Metatron_ broke heaven," Dean said, striding forward, getting a lot closer to Death than was probably smart. But, weirdly, he didn't exactly feel too worried about it, for once. "He lied to us, he lied to Cas and he lied to the angels."

Death looked up at him, unblinking, unmoved by Dean's emotion, and Dean felt his anger ebbing, unsustainable. 

"And you never stopped to fact-check him, until it was too late." Death pushed away from the mantle and crossed a small expanse of intricately patterned rug, his polished shoes silent. He settled into one of the leather chairs and for the first time, Dean noticed a Styrofoam take-out container. It had what looked like a slice of cheesecake in it, a white plastic fork upright in the tip. "That's the ultimate tragedy of you Winchesters – always so ready to rush in, to take sides, to _believe_." Death lifted the clamshell box in one hand and slid the fork out of the cheesecake with the other. "You're always so sure you're on the _right_ side, and that everyone else will want to join you."

"Yeah, well, we usually are." Dean hesitated for a long moment and then settled into the chair that sat opposite Death's. It wasn't too bad, really. "I'm…sorry about Tessa. I tried to stop her."

"Yes, I know." Death ate the forkful of cheesecake neatly, no crumbs or smears. It had a dark fruit topping, blueberry or something similar. "With Heaven being sealed and so many souls trapped in the Veil, things have been rather…chaotic of late."

"We fixed it, though, right? I mean, it seemed like...."

"Yes, you did." Death forked up another bite of cheesecake and chewed slowly, watching Dean. Dean stared back at him. "I imagine things will go back to what passes for normal, now, in the world. Unless your brother or your angel sees fit to meddle. Again."

"We wouldn’t have to if you super-power types would ever lift a damn finger. Any of you guys ever thought, if you didn't want fucked-up things to happen, that maybe you should try a little harder to keep fucked-up things from happening?"

"You know as well as I do that interfering with the natural order rarely works to anyone's advantage." Death ate another bite, a thin smile creasing his features for a moment. "Got this from a little place in the middle of Missouri. They make delicious pies, too. You should try it some time." 

"I'll be sure to make an extra trip from the here-after for pie," Dean said, though for a moment he wondered if maybe he _could_? Maybe Cas…. Dean smoothed his palms down his thighs and then, slowly, turned his arm over, flinching just a little from what he expected to see. His forearm, though, was bare, the skin unbroken, free of the Mark – of the stain of that first, ancient murder. He felt almost dizzy with relief. Angel blade to the heart, that's all it took.

"So!" He slapped his hands on his knees, earning a quelling look from Death over a tall glass of what appeared to be milk. "We gonna get this show on the road, or what? I don't remember all the other times I died but…a meet and greet's not exactly your style, is it?"

"No, it's not. Particularly not for you - I’d never get anything else done.” 

"So, what, then? What makes this time so special?"

Death blotted his mouth with a paper napkin, thin eyebrows going up in surprise. "You mean you don't know? Oh, of course you don't know. You rushed in where angels – even _your_ angel – fear to tread."

"He's not _my_ -"

"Semantics." Death dropped the used napkin into the now-empty clamshell and closed it with a little creak of Styrofoam. "The point being – you made a decision without all the facts, and now those facts are exacting a consequence."

"You mean me being dead? Because I gotta tell you, I went into that eyes wide open." 

“Did you, now?” Death brushed his hands down his immaculate shirt-front and leaned back in his chair. “You went into this like you do everything in your life - blind and panicked and pig-headed. Did you ever wonder how Cain had survived all those millennia?”

“He was a demon.”

“Yes. _Was_. And then he wasn’t. He killed himself with that blade.” At Dean’s look, Death sighed. “Like you, he had ideals, and, like you, he was willing to die for them. But he didn’t count on the blade.”

“Look, whatever you’re trying to say-” Dean started, and then stopped, listening. He could have sworn he’d heard a voice. “Just- say it. I ain’t got time for-” 

_I see…._

Dean scanned the room, coming up half out of the chair. “Did you hear that?”

“It’s the Mark, Dean.”

“What the hell do you mean? It’s gone.” Dean turned, looking all around him, scanning the dark corners of the dim room. The fire seemed to flare higher, shadows gliding across dark-stained wood. 

“ _I feel…._

“Oh, no. No, Dean.” Death stood, a fluid motion, and lifted his walking stick from where it was leaning against the chair. He crossed his hands on the silver-chased head of the stick, his dark gaze fixed on Dean. “It’s not gone. It was just...waiting. And now, I suspect, someone has woken it up again. Someone has used it to call you back.”

“Made a _deal_? What do you mean? Fuck, if Sam-” 

“I very much doubt Sam had anything to do with it.” Death paced away from Dean and back to the fireplace, standing erect like an old soldier, limned by the firelight, another shadow in a room growing increasingly dark. Dean spun on his heel, staring, as the shadows seemed to reach out, twisting like smoke. That voice, muttering, murmuring, sibilant and echoing, buzzed in his ear.

A pain flared in his arm, sharp and bright, and Dean grabbed his forearm, digging his nails in, hunching in on himself. There was heat there, fever-hot, and his arm ached like a bad tooth, a bone-deep throb. Sparks seemed to swarm under Dean’s skin, twisting up from his wrist to his forearm, leaving a trail of fire. 

“Tell me what- what’s happening to me, am I still dying? Is this-? Is this supposed to happen?”

“You’re not dying, Dean. I’m sorry. But I no longer have any say in when you’ll die. If you’ll die.”

“ _What_?” Dean asked - almost shouted - as the fire in his arm seemed to explode through his body, twisting his bones and searing his veins, making his blood boil. He could feel something - _something_ \- writhing in his chest, opening like a dark, malignant flower, sending tendrils of rot through his ribcage, into his heart.

“You’re not mine, anymore. And you’re not your own, either. You belong to the Mark, now.”

“But it’s gone! It’s done! What does this mean? What’s happening to me?”

Death stared at Dean as he shouted, spine bowing, as the Mark burned up through bone and flesh, searing itself into his arm again - glowing a sick, ruddy red under his skin. The room was turning - reeling - the shadows rushing together like tarnished mercury. Everything dimmed, flattening - drawing in and drawing _back_ at the same time, somehow, until there was only Death, haloed by firelight, his eyes nothing but pits in a sharp-edged mask.

“Good-bye, Dean. I’m- sorry,” Death said, and the sound, the voice….

_Howl at that moon…._

And Dean opened his eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> The 'little place in the middle of Missouri' is [A Slice of Pie](http://asliceofpie.info/index.html) and they make *amazing* pies. :)


End file.
